Good morning! I am feeling grateful this week. I guess that means this is a gratitude page. Gratitude is a good way to help weather the storms of life. We teach it in therapy. It is also a bedrock piece of every religion I know anything about. Gratitude is good stuff.
First of all, a shout out to Cracker Barrel restaurants. We ate at one of their locations yesterday. .When we came up to the hostess stand, my husband noted a sign saying large print and Braille menus were available.
Now, this is not a perfect world. The sign was about six inches by four inches. It was on the front of the podium. In a perfect world, the sign would have been multicolored neon and include audio. In other words, there was no way on God’s little, green acre anyone with visual impairment would see the sign to know the menus were available. But they are trying!
I mention Cracker Barrel by name for two reasons. The first reason is this: I was never going to see that sign. You probably would not, either! However, now you know to ask for the large print menu.
The second reason is this: efforts to accommodate impairments should be acknowledged. That means, if you know of a business that goes the extra mile for the visually impaired, let us know! It will help your fellow VIPs as well as send a message to the business that they “done good”.
And now for the potentially controversial part of the program. Hear me out before you hang me. Ok?
Of everything that could have gone wrong in my life, I am grateful it was age-related macular degeneration. What do you think about that?
Why would I say a “crazy” thing like that? For the first reason, it struck me in my “old age” (not that I am OLD, of course). I have a friend who has a teen with a chronic, fatiguing condition. When I was this teen’s age I had school, activities, friends. No time for those things when all you seem to do is sleep. Would I have wanted that condition? Nope.
Another reason a late in life condition was good? I was already established. I had my education and over 35, career years under my belt. My financial and personal lives were in good shape. Basically, if you can be prepared to lose your central vision, I was prepared.
I also have a former coworker diagnosed with bone cancer. Yikes. Do I need to actually state the positives of having dry AMD instead of bone cancer? Lethality, pain, constantly going for treatments, financial drain, just to name a few. Dry AMD is not lethal and there is no pain. Since there presently are no treatments, my life does not revolve around doctor’s visits. There is some financial cost, but since most of my “toys” are durable goods, those purchases were one time events and mostly paid by state vision services. If I had the choice between dry AMD and bone cancer, AMD is a shoo in.
And one last thing: my AMD started out atypically. It hit me like a Mack truck, but most of the time, dry AMD is slow, slow, slow. After the initial shock, it has been giving me time to adapt. I am learning how to deal with central vision loss at a doable pace.
And one more last thing, the more time it takes, the closer we are to treatments and maybe even cures. This is the best time in history to be experiencing a sight loss.
Still ready to hang me?
Written February 19th, 2019